Chapter XIII: The Nun in Medieval Literature (3)

"The matter in question here," he says, "is only the changing of a
habit or of such a course of life, which in itself is neither good nor
evil. And now consider but this one thing, how many valuable
privileges you lose together with your liberty. Now, if you have a
mind to read, pray or sing, you may go into your own chamber as much
and as often as you please. When you have enough of retirement you may
go to church, hear anthems, prayers and sermons and if you see any
matron or virgin remarkable for piety, in whose company you may get
good, if you see any man that is endowed with singular probity from
whom you may learn what will make for your bettering, you may have
their conversation; and you may choose that preacher that preaches
Christ most purely. When once you come into a cloister all these
things, which are the greatest assistance in the promotion of true
piety, you lose at once." "But," says Katherine, "in the meantime I
shall not be a nun." "What signifies the name?" replies Eubulus.
"Consider the thing itself. They make their boast of obedience and
will you not be praiseworthy in being obedient to your parents, your
bishop and your pastor, whom God has commanded you to obey? Do you
profess poverty? And may not you too, when all is in your parents'
hands? Although the virgins of former times were in an especial manner
commended by holy men for their liberality towards the poor; but they
could never have given anything if they had possessed nothing. Nor
will your charity be ever the less for living with your parents. And
what is there more in a convent than these? A veil, a linen shift
turned into a stole, and certain ceremonies, which of themselves
signify nothing to the advancement of piety and make nobody more
acceptable in the eyes of Christ, who only regards the purity of the
mind." "Are you then against the main institution of a monastic life?"
asks Katherine. "By no means," answers Eubulus. "But as I will not
persuade anybody against it that is already engaged in this sort of
life to endeavour to get out of it, so I would most undoubtedly
caution all young women, especially those of generous tempers, not to
precipitate themselves unadvisedly into that state from whence there
is no getting out afterwards. And the rather because their charity is
more in danger in a cloister than out of it; and beside that, you may
do whatever is done there as well at home."

But Katherine remains unpersuaded.

In the next dialogue, called "The Penitent Virgin"[1634] Eubulus and Katherine meet again, and Katherine informs her friend how she has entered the nunnery, but has repented and gone home to her parents before being fully professed:

"How did you get your parents' consent at last?" asks Eubulus. "First
by the restless solicitations of the monks and nuns and then by my own
importunities and tears, my mother was at length brought over; but my
father stood out stiffly still. But at last being plyed by several
engines, he was prevailed upon to yield; but yet, rather like one that
was forced than that consented. The matter was concluded in their
cups, and they preached damnation to him, if he refused to let Christ
have his spouse.... I was kept close at home for three days; but in
the mean time there were always with me some women of the college that
they call _convertites_, mightily encouraging me to persist in my holy
resolution and watching me narrowly, lest any of my friends or kindred
should come at me and make me alter my mind. In the meanwhile my habit
was making ready, and the provision for the feast." "Did not your mind
misgive you yet?" asks Eubolus. "No, not at all; and yet I was so
horridly frightened that I had rather die ten times over than suffer
the same again.... I had a most dreadful apparition." "Perhaps,"
remarks Eubulus slyly, "it was your evil genius that pushed you on to
this." "I am fully persuaded it was an evil spirit," replies
Katherine. "Tell me what shape it was in? Was it such as we use to
paint with a crooked beak, long horns, harpies claws and swinging
tail?" "You can make game of it," says poor Katherine, "but I had
rather sink into the earth than see such another." "And were your
women solicitresses with you then?" "No, nor I would not so much as
open my lips of it to them, though they sifted me most particularly
about it, when they found me almost dead with the surprise." "Shall I
tell you what it was?" says Eubulus. "These women had certainly
bewitched you, or conjured your brain out of your head rather[1635].
But did you persist in your resolution for all this?" "Yes, for they
told me that many were thus troubled upon their first consecrating
themselves to Christ; but if they got the better of the Devil that
bout, he'd let them alone for ever after." "Well, what pomp were you
carried out with?" "They put on all my finery, let down my hair and
dressed me just as if it had been for my wedding.... I was carried
from my father's house to the college by broad daylight and a world of
people staring at me." "O these Scaramouches," interrupts Eubulus,
"how they know how to wheedle the poor people!"

Katherine then tells him that she remained only twelve days in the nunnery, and after six changed her mind and besought her father and mother to take her away, which they eventually did. But what she saw that made her recant she refuses to tell Eubulus, though he announces himself well able to guess what it was. The dialogue ends on a significant note, "In the meanwhile you have been at a great charge." "Above four hundred crowns." "O these guttling nuptials!"[1636]

The racy dialogues of Erasmus illustrate the characteristic hostility of the new learning towards contemporary monastic orders, and embody the main charges which were customarily made against them, viz. the undue pressure brought to bear upon young people to take vows for which they were not necessarily suited, the avarice of the convents and the immorality of their inmates. Sir David Lyndesay's _Satyre of the Thrie Estaits_ dwells more specifically upon the latter accusation. In this lively castigation of the vices of the day, which was acted for nine hours before the court of King James V of Scotland at Cupar in 1535, Chastity comes upon the stage, lamenting that she has long been banished, unheeded and unfriended and that neither the temporal estate, nor the spiritual estate nor the Princes will befriend her. Diligence bids her seek refuge among the nuns, who are sworn to observe chastity, pointing to a Prioress of renown, sitting among the other spiritual lords. "I grant," says Chastity,

ghon Ladie hes vowit Chastitie
For hir professioun; thairto sould accord.
Scho maid that vow for ane Abesie,
Bot nocht for Christ Jesus our Lord.
Fra tyme that thay get thair vows, I stand for'd,
Thay banische hir out of thair cumpanie:
With Chastitie thay can mak na concord,
Bot leids thair lyfis in Sensualitie.
I sall obserue our counsall, gif I may.
Cum on, and heir quhat ghon Ladie will say,
My prudent, lustie, Ladie Priores,
Remember how ghe did vow Chastitie.
Madame, I pray ghow, of your gentilnes,
That ghe wald pleis to haif of me pitie,
And this ane nicht to gif me harberie:
For this I mak ghow supplicacioun.
Do ghe nocht sa, Madame, I dreid, perdie!
It will be caus of depravatioun.

But the Prioress has given her allegiance to the notorious Lady Sensuality, who, serving Queen Venus, has corrupted the court of King Humanity and especially his clergy. "Pass hynd, Madame," she says,

Be Christ I ghe cum nocht heir:
ghe are contrair to my cumplexioun ...
Dame Sensuall hes geuin directioun
ghow till exclude out of my cumpany.

Chastity then applies in vain to the Lords of Spirituality for shelter; an abbot jeers at her and a parson bids her

Pas hame amang the Nunnis and dwell,
Quhilks ar of Chastitie the well.
I traist thay will, with Buik and bell
Ressaue ghow in thair Closter;

to which Chastity replies:

Sir, quhen I was the Nunnis amang,
Out of thair dortour thay mee dang,
And wold nocht let me bide se lang
To say my Pater noster[1637].

At the end of the play the evil counsellors of King Humanity and corruptors of his Estates are punished by Sir Commonweal, with the assistance of Good Counsel and Correction. Correction, with his Scribe, examines the spiritual lords as to how they keep their vows, and thus interrogates the Prioress:

Quhat say ghe now, my Ladie Priores?
How have ghe vsit ghour office, can ghe ges?
Quhat was the caus ghe refusit harbrie
To this young lustie Ladie Chastitie?

and the Prioress replies:

I wald have harborit hir, with gude intent;
Bot my complexioun therto wald not assent.
I do my office efter auld vse and wount:
To ghour Parliament I will mak na mair count[1638].

The punishment of Flattery the Friar, the Prioress and the other prelates follows; and the Sergeants proceed to divest her of her habit, gaily adjuring her:

Cum on, my Ladie Priores.
We sall leir ghow to dance--
And that within ane lytill space--
Ane new pavin of France

(_Heir sall thay spuilghe the Priores; and scho sall haue
ane kirtill of silk under hir habite._)

Now, brother, be the Masse!
Be my iudgement, I think
This halie Priores
Is turnit in ane _cowclink_[1639]. [courtesan

The Prioress then makes a lament, which has already been quoted, blaming her friends for making her a nun, and declaring that nuns are not necessary to Christ's congregation and would be better advised to marry. Finally the Acts of Parliament of King Correction and King Humanity, for the better regulation of the realm, are proclaimed; and these include a condemnation of nunneries:

Because men seis, plainlie,
This wantoun Nunnis ar na way necessair
Till Common-weill, not ghit to the glorie
Of Christ's kirk, thocht thay be fat and fair.
And als, that fragill ordour feminine
Will nocht be missit in Christ's Religioun;
Thair rents vsit till ane better fyne
For Common-weill of all this Regioun[1640].

The date when these words were first proclaimed from a stage is significant; it was 1535, the year of the visitation of the monasteries in England. The confiscation of those rents was soon to be an accomplished fact; but it was a king rather than a commonweal that reaped the benefit.

There remains for consideration only one other class of literature which speaks of the nun. It is interesting to see the part which she plays in literature proper, outside popular songs and stories, or popular and didactic works written for purposes of edification. Considering the important part played by monastic institutions in the life of the upper classes it is perhaps surprising that the part played by the nun in secular literature is so small. But the explanation lies in the definitely romantic basis of the greater part of such literature, combined with the fact that it was aristocratic in origin and therefore inherited a respect for the nunneries, which prevented a romantic treatment of the nun, such as is found in the _chansons de nonnes_. Even so it is to be remarked that the treatment is romantic with a difference; the nun is willingly professed, pious, aloof, but it is because death or misfortune has put an end to lovers' joys; the type of nun who appears in this literature has retreated to a convent at the close of a life spent in the world. If the nun unwillingly professed has always been a favourite theme, so also has the broken-hearted wife or lover, hiding her sorrows in the silent cloister; from the twelfth to the nineteenth century she remains unchanging, from Belle Doette and Guinevere to the Lady Kirkpatrick:

To sweet Lincluden's holy cells
Fu' dowie I'll repair:
There peace wi' gentle patience dwells--
Nae deadly feuds are there.
In tears I'll wither ilka charm,
Like draps o' balefu' dew,
And wail a beauty that could harm
A knight sae brave and true[1641].

The anonymous twelfth century romance of Belle Doette contains some charming verses, describing her grief at her husband's death and her determination to enter a cloister:

Bele Doette a pris son duel a faire:
"Tant mari fustes, cuens Do, frans de bon aire!
Por vostre amor vestirai je la haire,
Ne sor mon cors n'avra pelice vaire.
E or en ai dol.
Por vos devenrai nonne en l'eglyse Saint Pol.

Por vos ferai une abbaie tele
Quant iert li jors que la feste iert nomee
Se nus i vient qui ait s'amor fausee
Ja del mostier ne savera l'entree.
E or en ai dol.
Por vos devenrai nonne en l'eglyse Saint Pol.

Bele Doette prist s'abaise a faire,
Qui mout est grande et ades sera maire:
Toz cels et celes vodra dedans atraire
Qui por amor sevent peine et mal traire.
E or en ai dol.
Por vos devenrai nonne en l'eglyse Saint Pol"[1642].

Lovely Doette, she weeps a husband fair.
"O count, my lord, frank wast thou, debonair!
For thy dear love I'll wear a shirt of hair,
Never again be clad in robe of vair.
Great grief have I.
Now in St Paul's a nun I'll live and die.

For thy dear love an abbey I will raise.
And when therein first sounds the song of praise
If one shall come who falsely love betrays
Ne'er shall she find an entrance all her days.
Great grief have I.
Now in St Paul's a nun I'll live and die.

Lovely Doette, she makes her abbey so.
Great now it is and greater still shall grow.
And lovers all into that church shall go
Who for love's sake know pain and bitter woe.
Great grief have I.
Now in St Paul's a nun I'll live and die."

To English readers the supreme representative of this type must always be Malory's Guinevere:

And when queen Guenever understood that king Arthur was slain, and all
the noble knights, Sir Mordred and all the remnant, then the queen
stole away and five ladies with her, and so she went to Almesbury, and
there she let make herself a nun, and wore white clothes and black,
and great penance she took, as ever did sinful lady in this land, and
never creature could make her merry, but lived in fasting, prayers and
alms-deeds, that all manner of people marvelled how virtuously she
was changed. Now leave we queen Guenever in Almesbury a nun in white
clothes and black, and there she was abbess and ruler as reason would.

There follows that incomparable chapter of parting, when Launcelot seeks his queen in her nunnery:

and then was queen Guenever ware of Sir Launcelot as he walked in the
cloister, and when she saw him there she swooned thrice, that all the
ladies and gentlewomen had work enough to hold the queen up. So when
she might speak, she called ladies and gentlewomen to her, and said,
Ye marvel, fair ladies, why I make this fare. Truly, she said, it is
for the sight of yonder knight that yonder standeth: wherefore, I pray
you all, call him to me. When Sir Launcelot was brought to her, then
she said to all the ladies, Through this man and me hath all this war
been wrought, and the death of the most noblest knights of the world;
for through our love that we have loved together is my noble lord
slain. Therefore, Sir Launcelot, wit thou well I am set in such a
plight to get my soul's health; and yet I trust, through God's grace,
that after my death to have a sight of the blessed face of Christ and
at doomsday to sit at his right side, for as sinful as ever I was are
saints in heaven. Therefore, Sir Launcelot, I require thee and beseech
thee heartily, for all the love that ever was betwixt us, that thou
never see me more in the visage; and I command thee on God's behalf
that thou forsake my company and to thy kingdom thou turn again and
keep well thy realm from war and wrack. For as well as I have loved
thee, mine heart will not serve me to see thee; for through thee and
me is the flower of kings and knights destroyed.

And so on, through the last parting, and the last kiss refused, and the lamentation "as they had been stung with spears," through the six long years of fasting and penance, till the day when Guinevere died and a vision bade Launcelot seek her corpse.

And when Sir Launcelot was come to Almesbury, within the nunnery,
queen Guenever died but half an hour before. And the ladies told Sir
Launcelot that queen Guenever told them all, or she passed, that Sir
Launcelot had been priest near a twelvemonth--And hither he cometh as
fast as he may to fetch my corpse; and beside my lord king Arthur he
shall bury me. Wherefore the queen said in hearing of them all, I
beseech Almighty God that I may never have power to see Sir Launcelot
with my worldly eyes. And thus, said all the ladies, was ever her
prayer these two days, till she was dead[1643].

This is a different romance from that of the gay _chansons de nonnes_, but it is romance all the same. There is little in common between Queen Guinevere and the lady who was loved and rescued by a king in the _Ancren Riwle_[1644].

One of the last--as it is one of the most graceful--pieces of courtly literature concerned with a convent is the delightful _Livre du dit de Poissy_, in which the French poetess Christine de Pisan tells of a journey, which she took in 1400, to visit her daughter, a nun at the famous convent of Poissy. This Dominican abbey, founded in 1304, was exceedingly rich and the special favourite of the kings of France, for it had been put under the protection of St Louis. The number of nuns, originally fixed at a hundred and twenty, soon rose to two hundred, and the aristocratic character of the house was very marked, for its inmates had to be of noble birth and to receive a special authorisation from the king before they could be admitted. At the time of Christine de Pisan's visit Marie de Bourbon, aunt of Charles VI, was prioress, and the convent also contained the nine year old Marie de France, his daughter (who took the veil at the age of five) and her cousin Catherine d'Harcourt. There were no nunneries so large and so rich in England at this late date; but Christine's description may serve to suggest what great houses like Shaftesbury and Romsey must have been like in the earlier days of their prime. Her account of the convent, with its fine buildings and gardens, its church, its rich lands and its gracious and dignified way of life forms a useful counterpoise to the bald and unidealised picture presented by the _comperta_ of visitations; for assuredly truth lies somewhere between the _comperta_, which deal solely with faults, and the poem, which deals solely with virtues.

Christine describes the brilliant cavalcade of lords and ladies riding in the spring morning through beautiful scenery, enlivening their journey with laughter and song and talk of love, until they came to the great abbey of Poissy. She describes their reception by the Prioress Marie de Bourbon and by the king's little daughter "joenne et tendre":

Par les degrez de pierre, que moult pris,
En hault montames
Ou bel hostel royal, que nous trouvames
Moult bien pare, et en sa chambre entrames
De grant beaulty.

The Prioress' lodging was evidently such as befitted a royal princess, even though she were a humble nun. Christine describes the manner of life of the nuns, how no man might enter the precincts to serve or see them, save a relative, and how they never left the convent and seldom saw strangers from the world:

Et de belles plusiers y a comme angelz.
Si ne vestent chemises, et sus langes
Gisent de nuis; n'ont pas coultes a franges
Mais materas
Qui sont couvers de biaulx tapis d'Arras
Bien ordenees, mais ce n'est que baras,
Car ils sont durs et emplis de bourras,
Et la vestues
Gisent de nuis celles dames rendues,
Qui se lievent ou elles sont batues
A matines; la leurs chambres tendues
En dortouer
Ont pres a pres, et en refectouer
Disnent tout temps, ou a beau lavourer.
Et en la court y a le parlouer
Ou a trellices
De fer doubles a fenestres coulices,
Et la en droit les dames des offices
A ceulz de hors parlent pour les complices
Et necessaires
Qu'il leur convient et fault en leurs affaires.
Si ont prevosts, seigneuries et maires,
Villes, Chastiaulx, rentes de plusieurs paires
Moult bien assises;
Et riches sont, ne nulles n'y sont mises
Fors par congie de roy qui leurs franchises
Leur doit garder et maintes autres guises
A la en droit.

Christine then tells how the Prioress invited the party to "desjuner" and how in a fair room they were served with rich wines and meats, in vessels of gold, and were waited upon by the nuns. Then the nuns led them through the buildings and grounds of the convent, showing them all the beauties of this "paradise terestre." She gives an extremely minute and interesting picture of Poissy as it was in 1400, the vaulted cloister with its carven pillars, surrounding a square lawn with a tall pine in the middle; the spacious frater, with glass windows; the fine chapter house; the stream of fresh water carried in pipes through all the different buildings; the great storehouses, cellars, ovens and other offices; the large, airy dorter; and finally the magnificent church, with its tall pillars and vaulted roof, its hangings, images, paintings and ornaments of glittering gold. She tells of the services held there, when the nuns knelt within a screen in the nave and the townsfolk and visitors and priests outside it. She gives a detailed account of the clothes worn by the nuns; a woman she, and not to be content with Malory's simple "white clothes and black." Finally she describes the wide gardens and woods of the convent, surrounded by a high wall and full of fruit-trees and birds and deer and coneys, with two fishponds, well-stocked with fish. In the exploration of these delights the day passed quickly. The gay party retired at nightfall to a neighbouring inn and early the next day paid a farewell visit to the hospitable nuns, who gave them gifts of belts and purses embroidered by themselves:

Et reprendre
De leurs joyaulx
Il nous covint, non fermillez n'aniaulx
Mais boursetes ouvrees a oysiaulx
D'or et soies, ceintures et laz biaulx,
Moult bien ouvrez,
Qui autre part ne sont telz recouvrez.

Then lords and ladies took horse again and, debating of love, rode back to Paris[1645].

Against this courtly idyll of monastic life one more picture of a nun must be set as complement and as contrast. It is deservedly well known; but no study of the nun in medieval literature would be complete without quoting in full Chaucer's description of Madame Eglentyne, a masterpiece of humorous observation, sympathetic without being idealised, gently sarcastic without being bitter. It is a fitting note on which to close this book:

Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse,
That of her smyling was ful simple and coy;
Hir grettest ooth was but by seynt loy;
And she was cleped madame Eglentyne.
Ful wel she song the service divyne,
Entuned in hir nose ful semely;
And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly,
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe.
At mete wel y-taught was she with-alle;
She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle,
Ne wette hir fingres in hir sauce depe.
Wel coude she carie a morsel and wel kepe,
That no drope ne fille up-on hir brest.
In curteisye was set ful muche hir lest.
Hir over lippe wyped she so clene,
That in hir coppe was no ferthing sene
Of grece, whan she dronken hadde hir draughte.
Ful semely after hir mete she raughte,
And sikerly she was of greet disport,
And ful plesaunt and amiable of port,
And peyned hir to countrefete chere
Of court, and been estatlich of manere,
And to be holden digne of reverence.
But, for to speken of hir conscience,
She was so charitable and so pitous,
She wolde wepe, if that she sawe a mous
Caught in a trap, if it were deed or bledde.
Of smale houndes had she, that she fedde
With rosted flesh, or milk and wastel-breed.
But sore weep she if oon of hem were deed,
Or if men smoot it with a yerde smerte:
And al was conscience and tendre herte.
Ful semely hir wimpel pinched was;
Hir nose tretys; hir eyen greye as glas;
Hir mouth ful smal, and ther-to softe and reed;
But sikerly she hadde a fair forheed;
It was almost a spanne brood, I trowe;
For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe.
Ful fetis was hir cloke, as I was war.
Of smal coral aboute hir arm she bar
A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene;
And ther-on heng a broche of gold ful shene,
On which ther was first write a crouned A,
And after, _Amor vincit omnia_[1646].